Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk will lead a ceremony at 1 p.m. EST Friday, Feb. 26, officially naming the NASA Headquarters building in Washington in honor of Mary W. Jackson.
The event will air live on NASA Television and the agencys website and will livestream on the agencys Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as theNASA app.
Jackson, the first African American female engineer at NASA, began her career with the agency in the segregated West Area Computing Unit of NASAs Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The mathematician and aerospace engineer went on to lead programs influencing the hiring and promotion of women in NASA's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. In 2019, she posthumously received the Congressional Gold Medal.
The work of Jackson and others in the West Area Computing Unit caught widespread national attention in the 2016 Margot Lee Shetterly book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race. The book was made into a popular movie that same year, and award-winning actress Janelle Mone portrayed Jackson.
Members of Jacksons family and other guests will join Jurczyk for the ceremony, including:
- Clayton Turner, NASA Langley center director
- Christine Darden, retired NASA engineer and Hidden Figure, as profiled in Shetterlys book
- Artist Tenbeete Solomon, also known as Trap Bob
- Wanda Jackson, granddaughter of Mary W. Jackson
In addition to unveiling a building sign with Jacksons name, the event will feature video tributes with reflections on Jacksons career and legacy from a variety of individuals, including William R. Harvey, the president of Hampton University, Jacksons alma mater, as well as family and friends, current and former NASA employees and astronauts, celebrities, elected officials and others. The event also will feature a video of poet Nikki Giovanni reading an excerpt from her poem Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea, which is about space and civil rights.
